Basic Trope: A boss fight won by hitting their own attacks back at them.
- Straight: Emperor Evulz launches death orbs at the player during his boss fight. The key to winning the battle is to hit the orbs back and forth with your sword in order to damage Evulz
- Exaggerated: The entire fight is a button mashing contest, and winning is a matter of seeing who will ‘drop the ball’ first.
- Emperor Evulz can only be defeated by besting him in a literal tennis match.
- Downplayed: The orbs only bounce back once, for minimal damage.
- Justified:
- The death orbs are a Semantic Superpower, and they cannot be blocked or dodged…but nothing says they can’t be hit back.
- The sword you wield is specifically enchanted to do this.
- Evulz is so powerful that the only thing that can hurt him is himself.
- Inverted: You have to play a game of keep away with the macguffin Evulz needs to survive.
- Emperor Evulz can only be hurt by one of your slow charging attacks which he can deflect. You need to either hit it back or bounce it off from an unexpected angle to do damage to him.
- Subverted:
- Evulz prepares a death orb… and slams it into the ground, making a shockwave instead.
- It looks like this is going on, but it’s actually a game of normal tennis.
- Double Subverted:
- The orb travel through the ground to ambush the player, and you can still knock it back into Evulzs.
- The tennis game gets a little too intense…
- Parodied:
- The weapon you use to deflect the orb is, in fact, a tennis racket, and the arena is shaped like a tennis court.
- A phantom announcer screams out various tennis lingo (“MATCH POINT! 40-LOVE!”) whenever the death orb hits home.
- Zig Zagged: It’s a Dual boss with Evulz and his right hand man Drake. They can’t be hurt by their own projectiles, so you have to launch Evulz’s projectiles at Drake and vice versa.
- Averted: Projectiles aren’t bounced back and forth like that.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: “Hope your overhand smash is up to snuff!”
- Invoked:
- Evulz decides to use the death orbs on purpose because he thinks he’s spry enough to overcome their weaknesses of being launched back at him.
- The Chooser of the One chooses a tennis champion as The Chosen One, specifically so he’ll be well prepared when the trope occurs.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Evulz’s death orbs explode on contact, and he mocks you for thinking you could hoist his petard so easily.
- Discussed: “Try hitting the death orbs back at Evulz! Despite their glowing appearance, they’re very physical objects with very physical damage.”
- Conversed: “What is it with the fate of the world and tennis, anyway?”
Launch that energy orb right back at the main page!
